Adhesive-coated stickers are flexible material sheets which are coated, on one side, with an adhesive layer which is subsequently covered by a non-stick material sheet. In order to apply the sticker to a surface, the non-stick material sheet is peeled off the coated surface and the coated surface is then pressed against the surface over which the sticker is to be posted. The flexible material of the sticker may be made of paper, fibrous sheet, plastic film (which may be transparent, translucent or opaque), metal foil or other materials known in the art. The non-stick material sheet may be made of silicone-coated, wax-coated, Teflon-coated or some other non-stick material-coated paper, fibrous sheet, plastic film, metal foil or other non-stick materials commonly known in the art as release-coated materials or paper sheets.
The adhesive coating applied on the sticker surface may be chosen from a variety of adhesives, known in the art. When the adhesive is of high strength or a permanent nature, peeling the sticker off the surface on which it is applied usually results in some damage to the sticker, the surface on which it is applied or, in some cases, both. On the other hand, when the adhesive coating is of a weak, non-destructive or temporary adhesion nature, as the sticker is peeled off, the adhesive remains on the sticker and the application surface suffers no damage. When the surface of such sticker is partially coated, usually in some area adjacent to its edge, and a plurality of stickers are stacked in a writing or memo pad form, as it is well known in the art, the stickers are used for temporarily referencing a sheet or a page in a book or for temporarily posting a note. In accordance with the present invention, such partially-coated sticker is referred to as a postable sticker.
An inconvenience encountered in use of postable stickers of the prior art is that when not posted onto a surface, the exposed adhesive-coated area sticks to other surfaces it is brought in contact with. This poses an inconvenience when a user elects to save the sticker in order to save the information written or printed on it. A user may take one of three approaches to overcome such inconvenience when he or she desires to save the information on the sticker, namely; (1) fold the sticker in order to cover the adhesive layer, (2) cut or tear the sticker along a line that separates the coated area from the uncoated area. This is usually done by using scissors or by folding and pressing the sticker along the folding line then tearing it along such line, or (3) cover the adhesive-coated area with a strip of paper.
The present invention makes it possible to overcome such inconvenience by introducing a weakened tear line in the sticker along a path that substantially separates the coated area from the uncoated area. Therefore, when a user elects to save the information on the postable sticker, without encountering the inconvenience of sticker adhesion to other surfaces, he or she may tear the sticker along the weakened tear line and retain the adhesive coating-free portion of the sticker.
Alternatively, the present invention solves the same problem, of postable sticker inconvenient adhesion to other surfaces, by introducing a weakened fold line (score line) in the sticker such that when the sticker is folded along the weakened fold line (score line) and pressed, the adhesive coating on the first area is substantially covered and adheres to the back side of the postable sticker. Thus, the second area of the sticker may be saved without exhibiting any inconvenient sticking to other surfaces.
In addition to overcoming the problems of inconvenient adhesion of stickers of the prior art, the present invention makes it possible to expand the utility of the stickers of the prior art by introducing additional weakened tear lines and/or score lines that divide the postable sticker into a plurality of sections for selective partial removal of sections of the sticker along predetermined weakened tear lines or score lines.